


bristling captivation

by charbroiled



Series: excoriation (eirika/valter) [2]
Category: Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
Genre: Attempted Cannibalism, Blood, Choking, Consensual Sex, Death (unnamed character), F/M, Femdom, Live Dove: Eaten, Marking, Menstrual Sex, Menstruation, Oral Sex, Unethical Carnivorism, Violence, cute wyvern bonding time, dark path eirika, i mean they literally eat a bird, screwed up lord/retainer shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-13 04:01:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29645451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charbroiled/pseuds/charbroiled
Summary: Eirika decides that she wants to see her new vassal, ex-general Valter, in action on the battlefield. Then they're separated from the others.Sequel(?) to excoriation and duel enucleation. Complete.
Relationships: Eirika/Valter (Fire Emblem)
Series: excoriation (eirika/valter) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2178399
Comments: 15
Kudos: 13





	1. fight

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Duel Enucleation](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28399749) by [merryfortune](https://archiveofourown.org/users/merryfortune/pseuds/merryfortune). 



> i've had a brain bobbitworm for ages about valter regarding how taming in animal husbandry is what you do to get the animal to rely on and return to you. the idea of genuinely being unable to relate to anyone except in this warped combative sense, literalized through apex predator wyvern-handling and the stain of a curse he's not coherently aware of, has an appealing creepy/bizarro quality to me.
> 
> the rest is just "aren't you tired of being nice? don't you just want to go apeshit??" hahah. in this case, eirika does...

The reason she followed Valter was, Eirika told herself, because she wanted to see how he fought when he thought he was unwatched. How the famously cruel former general conducted himself on his own terms, with no one—and specifically not her—to impress.

It wasn’t as though their war was going well. There were a lot of reasonable arguments for taking any of the actions she had—capturing the beast fascinated with her rather than killing him, having him pledge binding loyalty with a gift of flesh—most of the actions, anyway—but a sort of mutual fascination was the foremost. What did it mean to be found beautiful by a beast? When he looked at her hungrily, she was not frightened. Rather it felt like a challenge, one which made her blood pound to imagine rising to.

Valter was still fast on foot, his sea-green hair streaming over his leather and chainmail armor, the flashiness of capes and plates he had flaunted from his wyvern’s back replaced by simpler, less grand attire. And he was still deadly, circling, waiting, playing defensively until his opening came. When he struck he struck decisively and fatally, skewering with his boar spear and wrenching it free to prowl on seeking his next prey, grinning or laughing. The loss of his eye hadn’t slowed him much, but there were little tics that she suspected were changes; how often he tilted and swiveled his head, surveying the field, how carefully he plotted his distance. When he was unengaged he let the spear steady in one hand and the other hovered near the hilt of the dirk at his belt, betraying a nervousness Eirika suspected was new to him. His wyvern would have had his back, before. Now he was alone, more or less.

Between her own short bouts with Grado’s opportunistic soldiers and how quickly she had to wipe down her rapier and move on to keep an eye on Valter, the heat and tunnel-focus and blood in her ears, Eirika barely noticed how distant the other sounds of battle became, how the land turned from hilly brush to forest, until she realized Valter was standing alone in a twisted grove, head cocked and listening for a sign of the fleeing footsoldier he’d pursued over the hill and into these forested lowlands.

Of course what he heard was her, clattering after him in her full armor. He turned, then raised his eyebrows when he saw her, his expression broadening into an unkind amusement, a thin smile which did not quite reach the ice of his remaining eye.

“Does such a small jaunt leave my lady breathless?” he called out to her, and Eirika swore under her breath but continued forward.

“Fleeing my service into exile in the woods already, Valter?” she called back. “Is that an easier life? I expected more from you.”

If her words landed, he didn’t flinch. Instead, he chuckled, a gravely noise. “I’m flattered to learn you think so highly of me.”

Another mere spears’ length away from her disgraced general, she saw the mistake he’d made before he did. The trees provided just enough cover for the other spearman to conceal himself and rest, long enough for Eirika to catch up and for Valter to turn his back on his prey. He heard the noise, of course—he was experienced—but he went for the dirk instead of the spear and that would have cost him just enough space and time that the price should have been his life.

Eirika acted first, shifting her grip to the crossbar and throwing her sword. It wasn’t a graceful act or one she’d practiced often, but she knew the heft and balance of her blade as though it was an extension of her arm and she knew her own strength and aim.

The blade flew true. It nicked Valter's arm and pierced the unlucky soldier through the shoulder; he carried forward with his strike but the blow bought enough time for Valter to free his dirk from his belt, step to the side and deftly bring the short blade up into the man's ribs. The soldier fought a rasping gasp while Valter wrenched the spear out of his senseless hands.

Eirika had seen death enough times—dealt it—that her first thought was that the sword sticking out of the joint of the man's pauldrons, blade still shuddering from impact, looked almost comedic. Valter stepped on the man's chest, grasping her sword and yanking it out; fresh blood sputtered, then flowed. He leaned his full weight on the man, until there was a hoarse cry and a snap, and then he turned and with a cat's crinkle to his eyes presented Eirika her sword.

She took it wordlessly and wiped the blade on the grass. "You should thank me."

"Oh? For what?" He picked up the second spear, hefted it experimentally, and then drove it to the dirt and, using his weight once again, snapped the shaft in half with a grunt. He turned to Eirika with the splintered wood in his hand. “Your sense of sportsmanship, only interfering when you thought my life was on the line? Yes, one of your many enticing traits.” 

Ugh. The look he was giving her wasn’t quite a leer, an appraising stare that slid ice along her spine, made all the more predatory by his unkempt hair like a mane over his shoulders. Appraised and found delicious.

That thought made an uncomfortable warmth rise between her thighs. She strode forward to shake it off while he pitched the splintered spear into the woods. When she reached his side, it was the Grado soldier that caught her attention; a twitch of his hand that told her he was still alive. Valter must have known, and he just let the mortally injured man lie here while he bantered.

She turned to berate him, and Valter leaned in, taking her chin in his hand, a tight grip and the smooth leather of his glove. He tilted her head to examine her face dispassionately.

“Your color is poor. Partake of the kill with me.”

“What?” Eirika said. His breath wasn’t as bad as she’d expected. Between the ice in her spine and the heat in her core it took a moment for her mind to catch up with his words, and when she did, her face flushed. “Partake—you’re asking me to eat a dead man with you?! Absolutely not!”

He released her face, still leaning in, his hair almost brushing her skin. “Oh? You’ll only consume living flesh? A curious predilection, princess. But easily arranged.” He shifted weight, attention turning back to the dying man, glove brushing the hilt of his dirk. He was completely serious.

“Stop!”

He laughed.

Eirika’s hand dropped to her own sword, making sure it was securely sheathed and belted, and then she ducked under Valter's arms and swept her foot under his, knocking him to the ground. Before he could recover the breath she’d knocked out of him she swung her weight over him to pin his arms down with her knees, sitting on his shoulders and chest to keep him from being able to brace himself back up. He went down with a grunt, and she heard his boots scrabble on the grass as she put her gauntleted hands around his throat. He buckled under her, trying to throw her off, wild-eyed and not bothering with words. Their actions spoke for them.

Eirika pressed her thumbs into the curve of his throat, felt the strain of him thrashing, his blood and breath, how when she squeezed he arched into her but not combative so much as excited, that eager, hollow-eyed look, lips parted as much in a baring of teeth as a smile. His waves of hair fanned out against the sun-bleached grass and against his gaunt face his eye was the glimmering blue of the point of a blade.

“I am your liege and you will do as I say when I say it,” Eirika said. The anger swelling in her was a cold one. She could tear his throat out, hot blood on her gauntlets. Instead she eased her grip, just slightly, just enough for him to suck in a hoarse breath. “Do you understand me?” 

“Why waste a corpse—“ Each word was fought for. She tightened her grip again and he choked.

“Say I am your liege.”

Valter’s hands dug into the ground but even through his struggling for breath and leverage she could feel the beginning of arousal through his breeches against her thigh. Her own body responded; something in his widening smile and the twitching of his toned body against her awakened a distant flush of arousal in herself as well.

He squirmed. “You’re— _mine—_ “

“I am your liege and you will obey me!” Eirika repeated, pushing the thoughts stirring in her aside.

“Nng—yes—my liege—“

“Stop it.” She released him, pushed herself to her feet, and he gasped like a drowning man and went limp, his gloved hand to his bruising throat.

Finishing off the Grado soldier was as dissatisfying as it was simple, her sword through his throat. All business, she thought. Only a madman found pleasure in this.

Valter made a disapproving  _ tsk  _ from the ground, now sitting up, his hand still at his neck. His other hand adjusted his eyepatch to better cover the healing mess of his empty socket. For once, he was silent. Eirika cleaned her blade again and sheathed it. She glanced around. The copse they'd found themselves in was a lowland grove surrounded by lightly forested hills. She'd been sure she would be able to find her way back easily—these lands were colder, rockier than her homeland—but she heard no sounds of battle, saw no banners, recognized nothing about where they were, and the sun was setting.

"Where are we, from the field?" she asked Valter. He shrugged, still eying the dead man with an air of aloof disappointment. "If your intention wasn't to separate from the army, why did you chase a retreating man so far?"

"Distance is no barrier from the back of a wyvern."

"You can just admit you don't know how to navigate on foot. Embarrassing, getting lost in your own homeland."

Valter inclined his head, more amused than subdued. "Grado is no longer mine until you conquer it, my lady. Don't fret, your little army will locate you sooner or later. Even the most useless mutt has a sense of smell."

"Just me?" Eirika crossed her arms over her breastplate.

"Picky, aren't you? Why should they look for me? I'll be with you, regardless." Valter staggered to his feet. "Night's falling."

"Better to stay in one place than travel across enemy territory in the dark. I don't think we can risk a fire…" Her gaze settled on the corpse of the spearman again. She opened her mouth to tell Valter to drag the dead man into the woods, then crinkled her nose. "Find shelter to overnight in. I'll deal with the body."

"Going to dig a grave yourself?" He chuckled to himself, a raspy noise.

"Just… moving him somewhere more dignified." The idea of sleeping anywhere near a dead man still made her skin crawl, not to mention that it was rude to leave him out in the open. She couldn't dig a grave, but natural scavengers eating a body was more respectful than the man being raised from the dead to fight again, shambling and restless, or being torn apart by monsters. Like the one accompanying her.

Valter picked his spear from the ground and rested it on his shoulder with careless poise. “A waste of time and effort. My wyvern and I would have shared a meal.”

“I’m not a wyvern.” Unnatural hunger tainted everything he did. Was that why he had been so excited by her swallowing his eye? Eating, being eaten… even how he’d responded when she’d throttled him, pushing himself against her. His lean figure and face, the stare of naked anticipation when he looked at her, the thought of gripping his greasy hair the color of the stormy ocean between her fingers and riding his head between her thighs, how he strained on the tip of her sword to give a piece of himself to her... His words and actions were revolting, but there was an appeal to the attention, the unthinking cruel grace.

Maybe it was the honesty of a beast which she respected, or that he saw unyielding competence in her, a woman he desired to both kneel before and serve and challenge rather than a girl who needed help. The girl she’d always been in the shadow of her stronger twin.

The thoughts were a distraction from the chore of disposing of a body, at least. Eirika dragged the man as far as she could without getting more lost, and when she found a suitable area against some bushes she covered the man's eyes— _ how easy it would have been to gouge them out of the slack flesh _ —and awkwardly folded his arms over his still chest. His clothes were soaked in blood and useless to her. She closed her own eyes and tried to remember what priests or sages said over the dead. Her memory came up empty.

An odd warble broke her thoughts, and when she opened her eyes a dove was flapping its wing, dancing as though it were wounded. She must have picked a spot near her nest. She watched it silent, an arm's length away, and when it circled back near her something in her snapped and she lunged forward and snatched the bird from the ground.

The lying warbles silenced. The bird bunched up, and she could feel its heart racing against her hand, ashen feathers puffing up against her skin. She stared at it and it stared back with one pitch-black eye.

She took the bird back to Valter.

Valter had found an outcropping disguised in the grove, a weathered jut of stone curved over with tree roots, easy to defend and difficult to pick out of the slope of woods. He'd stripped the heaviest pieces of his armor off and was stretching the kinks of battle out of his arms and shoulders when she arrived. He raised an eyebrow at the sight of the bird in her hand.

"Help me with my armor, footman," Eirika said. 

Valter rolled his shoulders back, cracking his neck with a rough bark of a laugh, but came over to her anyway. He unhooked her cape, pausing to gather her hair and sweep it over her shoulder before he ran his hands firmly over her back, finding and undoing the straps to her breastplate and pauldrons. She noted that with each piece discarded he moved closer to her, until he was standing against her, fingers digging into the battle-stained fabric of her gambeson with a searching intimacy. It was the bird that struggled, still living, in her own tight grip.

He leaned over her shoulder and she felt him take in a breath to speak quietly into her ear. Eirika drove her thumb into the chest of the dove, splitting the breast open with a shuddering crack. Hot blood spilled over her hand. She spread the ribcage and held the hollow body up to his face. 

Valter didn't hesitate, didn't ask her what she intended him to do; he tightened his grip against her and shoved his face in eagerly, pulling at the muscle between his teeth, gutting and swallowing the little carcass. The smell of iron and ash was so strong that she could taste it. She reached over with her free hand and took his hair by the root, pulling him away from the bird back towards her. His nose and mouth dripped with blood, all the more shocking a color against his pale face. The hollow ribs had scratched his cheeks. She reached up and kissed him, licked the blood from his lips, let herself lean in and revel in the taste, the smell, the still-hot blood and his body taut against her.

Then she let go, stepped back, and wiped her mouth. In the midst of impulse it was impossible for her to dredge up regrets.

"How disgusting," Valter said, his eye bright, just slightly hunched and coiled as though to lunge at her. His crooked grin was still smeared with the dove's viscera.

"Enough. I'm done." She dropped the bird and stepped forward, wiping her hand and then her face on his sleeve. "Sit down. I'm tired." He made a low noise—an actual growl—deep in his chest, but then flopped down to sit with his back against the cold mossy stone and pulled their respective weapons into arms' reach.

She sat against him, her back to him, her legs curled up against her own chest. The cold of evening was settling in. He draped her cape over her legs, then coiled himself around her, his arms around her waist, her head tucked comfortably under his chin. His gloves rode up; Scabs marked his wrists, from the manacles she'd put him in when he was first captured. He stank of sweat and battle, but so did she.

Eirika let her head rest against his throat. “Why are you like this?”

“Hm? Be more specific.” His grip on her was very lazy, self-assured; she has her hands over his

“A beast.”

He tilted his head, shifting a little; one of the odd pauses she’d learned to interpret as him thinking, strange as his thoughts were.

“One evening a hunger blossomed in me, tooth and claw. The wyvern pursues her prey to the end, whether it fights, whether it runs, why not I? Does it matter what sort the flesh? Only the pursuit, the struggle, the kill fills me. I see it in you in battle, how you unfurl into steel. Even cornered you're a steadfast little mink, a determined hunter. Yet there’s fear in your eyes when you face death. That fear isn’t for us, my wayward princess. We are the talons and they are the flesh. You’ll learn the joy yet.”

"Aren’t you bored, then, to sit here calmly?"

"Yes, but everyone tires, even a beast. Eat, rest, and we'll hunt again, my lady." Eirika did not miss that his emphasis lay on the  _ my _ in his drawling speech. "I’ll keep watch; you conserve your strength and dream of what most precious prey you will feel the hot blood of between your teeth tomorrow."

Could she sleep like this? On the field, battle an omnipresent threat, their weapons and armor close at hand, tangled against someone crude, cruel, someone who never questioned her ability to fight or take care of herself. Perhaps they were two wyverns twisted in each other's talons.

She slept, and when she dreamed, she dreamed of teeth.


	2. feast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I didn't expect this to be multiple chapters long, but here we are. Cute wyvern hours!

Their retrieval and return to Eirika’s army was unremarkable, and to her surprise Valter more or less behaved himself for the rest of the week, even declining a challenge to duel from another spear-wielding newcomer to the army with a scornful dismissal—a low standard, to be sure, but better than self-inflicted injuries among her troops. Today her body saw fit to remind her of the passage of time as well with the dual indignities of cramps and blood. She’d finished her last bleed just before meeting him chained and taking his eye. Had it really been a month since Valter had been captured? Five weeks?

Perhaps it was time to make fuller use of him.

Several large tents clustered near the outskirts of the encampment made up the main barracks of the army, where the infantrymen slept in rows, away from the noise and mess of the horses and wyverns along the edge of camp. Eirika’s tent was alone at the center, regularly patrolled. Valter she had assigned to a squadron near her, taking the place of a dead man, on the other side of the camp from the wounded wyvern which seemed to be the only other living creature he cared about.

Besides her, that was. His care for himself was certainly in question.

The flap of the tent was tied open to air out the smell of after-battle men and women. Inside, she could see several of the soldiers indulging in off-duty pastimes such as snoring or writing in pocket-books. The blanket that passed for Valter’s cot was shoved in a corner, and he was stretched out on it, awake, hands behind his head, staring at the sloped roof of the tent. Valter was wearing dark trousers and riding boots, a grey linen tunic, belted at the waist, the loose fit showing off his lean muscle and broad chest with a carelessness that made the glimpses of his toned body through his clothes even more attractive. His spear and his dirk and his armor were neatly stacked beside him. He had no other possessions.

She knew Valter noticed her entry because his eye tracked her, but he didn’t move or acknowledge her. His barracks neighbor, Forde, was startled out of sleep by Eirika's shadow passing over his face. Forde squinted up at her blearily. “Princess Eirika?! Why are you in the, uh… do you need something? ”

Regardless of how she acted or addressed people, as her subjects or her equals, there was an uncrossable rift between her and other people. Her life was worth more than theirs, through no virtue of her own. She waved her hand to silence Forde. “Just pretend I wasn’t here.”

“Sure, but—why?”

“Yes, why?” Valter echoed, watching her, but unmoved. “Could the inimitable princess of Renais be embarrassed of something?”

Her face flushed despite herself. She turned her back on Forde to stride over to Valter and stand over him, although she was nearly a foot shorter when he wasn't lying on the ground. She nudged him with the toe of her boot. “Only of you, feckless asshole," she said, curtly. "Get up.”

"Anyone who  _ doesn’t _ get up for you must be blind," Valter said, arching his back and stretching his shoulders as if just waking, all the while smiling at her, his voice a throaty and suggestive purr. "Though even if you took my other eye, I think I'd manage—"

"Stop." The heat in her face grew, and she could feel her cheeks prickling with the dizzying combination of irritation, embarrassment and attraction. Despite herself, her gaze stayed on his body; his chest, his collarbone, the fading ring of bruises on his neck.

"Oh, come now. Everyone knows we're fucking."   
  
The awkward silence which descended on the tent, even pausing the scratch of the pen, told Eirika otherwise. She didn't need to turn around to know that everyone else would be pretending to mind their own business, pretending not to look at her. It was true, though. All they could do was think less of her. She cleared her throat and straightened her back.

"Yes," she said, "Or they do now. Come with me."

There was that flicker of insatiable—what, hunger?—behind his eye, and then he wrenched himself to his feet, only pausing to fasten his dirk to his belt. Eirika reached up and took his head firmly in her hands in that moment his attention slipped off her, pulling his face down to face her. From the way his fingers twitched around the hilt of his weapon, she'd startled him. Good. She turned his head to examine him, ignoring the slight snarl to his lips and narrowed eye.

She pushed his eyepatch aside, running her thumb along the scabbing flesh. "Looks like it's healing nicely."

"Is that why you're making all this fuss? Just because you wanted to touch me?"

"I've gotten you permission to serve as a mounted knight again, astride your precious wyvern." She adjusted the eyepatch over his eye again, then patted his cheek. He pulled away, but she knew him well enough now that she could tell the unpleasant smile that graced his lips now meant he was genuinely happy.

\--

Valter's good mood only lasted the walk to the wyvern's stables. His wyvern, an old and scarred saber-fanged beast with an orchid tint to her scales and a nasty temperament that matched her master's, had been muzzled, hobbled, and chained to a post, a wyverns'-length again away from the others. The hobbles had chafed patches of her scales raw. At the sight, Valter's pose stiffened. He clicked between his teeth, and then strode over.

"What have they done to you, my lovely Hekate?" he muttered, under his breath. Hekate lifted her head. A shiver ran through her body and she roused her entire considerable weight, raising her head and spreading her wings to the extent her hobbles would allow. Valter extended his hands and Hekate pushed her huge head, easily the size of his torso, against him with a noise that Eirika could only describe as a chirp. Valter laughed; he examined the wyvern's eyes first, then began to loosen the straps of her muzzle.

Eirika kept her distance. "Even muzzled, we had to use a pole to feed her," she said. "You're lucky we didn't just put her down."

Valter's hand rested on the strap for a moment, and he turned to look at Eirika, his smile a wide and toothy one that didn't quite reach the rest of his face. "Whoever struck that blow," he said, "would have lived just long enough to regret it."

"And if it were me?"

"No need to be jealous, princess." Hekate's head freed, he moved down to work at the bindings on her wings. "I'm sure you'd look just as fierce in bondage."

Eirika frowned, wrinkling her nose up in distaste. If he could dodge a subject, so could she. "Well? Aren’t you going to introduce me?"

Valter threw his head back and laughed. "Present you to her? Like food? Hahah! No, go fetch some fish for her and present them to her yourself when I've freed her. Pretend it’s your idea. Don’t flinch or hesitate. Haven't you handled a wyvern before?"

"Only you."

"Flattery will get you nowhere with an animal."

"I've ridden horses and pegasi, not wyverns."

"Hmph. Beasts of burden and prey."

"Why don't you saddle her and show me the difference, then?"

"Aren't you the impatient one? Spoiled girl. I need to make sure she's fit to fly." He threw one of the belts over Hekate's back, leaning in to dig his knuckles into the underside of the wyvern's jaw. The wyvern shifted her weight into him, playfully, as though she weren't a viper-fanged monster whose beak Eirika had seen bite through a man's armor with the ease of snapping a biscuit. Kin of some kind or another.

Eirika procured a fish the size of her arm from the barrel set aside for the friendlier wyverns, and when she returned with it, Valter had Hekate lying on the ground, legs bunched under her and wings stretched to her full massive width, while he buckled the saddle over the hump of her neck. Her tail swished lazily back and forth through the grass.

Approaching the creature would have been daunting even if it weren't a known man-eater. How was she supposed to walk up to a wyvern? From the front, or side? Eirika suspected the fish smell was leaching into her own tunic along with the cold water dampening her sleeves. She chose the front, and took a deep breath, banishing the last of her unease with the wry thought that if Hekate killed her, Valter would find himself in the reverse of the conundrum that he'd dismissed minutes earlier.

The freed wyvern was larger up close than she'd seemed when she was bound. Eirika crossed the distance to her easily, but the former shrieking fury that had possessed Hekate whenever anyone got near her seemed to have dissipated with the presence of Valter. Hekate tilted her head to eye Eirika—or her fish—with one slit magenta eye.

"It's for you," Eirika said. "Hekate." She held the heavy fish out, tentatively, by the tail. Hekate threw her head up and snapped the fish down in one swift gulp, then laid her head back down on the grass, still eyeing Eirika.

"Good girl," Valter said, approvingly, his hands on the saddle, and Eirika wasn't sure to which of them he was speaking. 


	3. fuck

Valter insisted on taking a short flight without Eirika to make sure that Hekate's wings had healed properly before she tried to carry a second passenger. It was more thoughtfulness than she'd ever seen him show to a human, even when he'd pledged himself panting to her on the point of her sword. Their circuit was more of a jaunt than a flight, Hekate throwing herself into the air with the reckless furor of a hawk. They circled the camp twice, swooping up to startle the other patrolling pegasus-mounted knights from behind in a twisting arc as beautiful as it was ill-advised. He was more at ease in the air than on the ground, his crooked grin splitting his face, hair streaming behind him, an extension of the wyvern or the wyvern of him.

When he landed he did not dismount, just gestured Eirika over. Eirika placed her hand on Hekate's long neck, and Hekate twisted back to stare at Eirika. Neither blinked; a clear membrane flicked over Hekate's bright, slit eye.

"Calm, girl. She's mine," Valter said, and Hekate tossed her horned head with a careless snort that also wasn't unlike her master.

Part of Eirika hadn't expected him to return, given the chance to leave. She accepted his hand and let him pull her up to sit astride the saddle in front of him. "I don't think they could have caught you," she said.

"Hm?"

"The patrol. If you chose to defect and flew away."

A moment of silence while Valter leaned forward, his warm chest against her back, and looped a tether around her legs and belt. With the knots fastened his hands trailed from her hips, one up her side, the other down to her thigh.

"I am anchored to you," he said, hot breath against her cheek, "by the flesh you took from me and made yours." His fingers settled under her chin, tilting her head back, his other hand pressing her tighter into his own straddling hips. He rested his mouth against the curve of her jaw, just for a moment, a soft inhale, and then he shifted his weight and sat back, slipping his arms under hers to adjust the reins. "Lean into me, princess. You can't fall, but you can certainly have an unpleasant ride."

She braced herself between him and the pommel as he suggested. Strapped in and with his arms around her it felt impossible to fall, but of course they hadn’t left the ground yet. 

“I’m ready.”

“Of course you are,” Valter said, although he leaned into her as well, tightened his legs around her, so that she fit against him snugly. Concern and condescension in one. “Well, Hekate, shall we teach our little mink to fly?”

Eirika began to respond, but Valter must have given Hekate some cue she didn’t catch because the words were knocked out of her by the wyvern’s coil and leap into the air, a lunge followed by the beating of wings like drum strikes. She clutched the pommel and grit her teeth, and felt the rumble of a chuckle in Valter's chest.

Pegasi were famous for their elegant appearances. Regardless of how delicate they looked, learning to ride them, especially during the lurch of takeoff and landing, had been a rough experience. Wyverns were brutes and looked the part, scales and fangs and vein-webbed wings in place of the gleaming hair and shimmering feathers of the pegasus, and their size and strength made the leap of a pegasus feel like a gentle trot.

Yet once the jolting of the ascent ended and Hekate extended her wings to glide, the flight was smoother than the gait of a horse or the rocking of a pegasus had even been. Eirika caught her breath, craning to stare out over Hekate's arching neck. The world stretched out beneath them, forests and hills reduced to bushes and map-marks, and above them, the clouds seemed in reach.

Was this the feeling Valter kept talking about? Being able to look down to the land on the steady wings of an eagle, a passing shadow to all below, choosing his prey at his convenience. Why fear death when you were the one who meted it out at your whim?

The rough lowlands below were giving way to craggy plains and mountains. Grado. Enemy territory.

Eirika patted Hekate's shoulder, surprised to find that the wyvern felt smooth and warm under her palm, like a snake, rather than cold and rough, like, well… the rocks of Grado. “Not that direction." She gestured to their right. "This way. Much safer for a joyride.”

“Hm.” Valter released one hand’s grip on the slack reins, instead sliding that arm around her waist and resting his chin against her head, almost sweetly. “Do you realize the precarious position you’ve put yourself into? Hasn’t it occurred to you that I could abduct you now? So concerned about my leaving you that you hadn’t considered perhaps that was my plan all along, to win your trust and then deliver you, a neat package, to Lyon’s waiting arms?”

“If you tried, I’d take your dirk from your belt and run it through your chest.”

“While I’m sitting behind you?” The amusement in his voice was palpable.

“Yes.”

“Dooming us both?”

“I said what I meant.”

Valter laughed. He slid his head down, against hers, his hips riding against her ass. His free hand circled her thigh, the firmness of his fingers her muscle making a heat rise in her. She did not shift into it, did not encourage him.

“Shouldn’t you be paying attention?”

“Mm. My lady knows what to do,” he said, throaty, pressed against her neck, hand trailing under her skirt and petticoat, making her skin prickle with the promise of intimacy. Eirika closed her eyes and let him continue for a moment, savoring the shiver of his touch, the audacity of being so handsy astride the back of a wyvern.

Then she opened her eyes, to watch the forest recede to rocky plains below them. “Stop it,” she said.

He pulled his hand back and set it on the reins.

“Turn back, there’s a clearing I want to see. We’ll land there.”

“Very well, though I can’t imagine any clearing isn’t much like another.” Valter’s cues to Hekate seemed to be using his weight or legs, as he shifted behind her again and Hekate gave a great flap of her wings and then yawed to circle back, rising on the current.

Eirika leaned back, reached up to take a handful of his hair by the root and pulled him over her shoulder. She kissed him, full on the mouth, her own wind-whipped hair unfortunately part of the experience but nonetheless the way he let her handle him, they way he stooped in eagerly and his mouth met hers with insistent hunger only made the heady warmth between her hips grow.

She parted just enough to leave a fingers-width between their skin. “This is how I know you aren’t planning to abduct me,” she murmured. “Hm, or only if I ask you to.”

“Oh?” The same cavalier tone, but breathy, pliant, just a hint of his ever-present amusement and crooked grin. “Would my lady enjoy that?”

Eirika released him. “Let me think about it,” she said.

They landed in a clearing not _too_ far from the army encampment, a grassy knoll dotted with flowers, nestled between patches of trees and a creek rushing with winter's melt. Minnows darted back and forth under the surface of the water.

Valter untied them both, then helped Eirika down. She moved behind him, carefully, to put his body between hers and the massive beast--not from fear, she told herself, but judicious caution.

Apparently uncaring, Valter checked Hekate's saddle, then slapped her on the flank. "Go fish, girl, or whatever you do on your own," he said. "Leave us alone for a bit, I don't have anything to feed you."

In response, Hekate clicked her beak with a fearsome snort, then stretched, her talons digging grooves into the earth. She folded her wings and took heavy steps to the creek, where she settled on the bank to watch the fish. Just watching her move was fascinating; from graceful predator to clumsy giant, though even how she tucked her wings and legs against her long body and curved her neck to consider the unsuspecting fish was with a carnivore's silent attention.

Eirika sat down herself, on the blanket of grass. Hekate was larger than any of the wyverns of Renais she'd ever seen, her color darker, her head more sloped as if for pinching and tearing. She was scarred as well, even bearing one oddly-colored patch on her wing that looked as though the flesh had been torn, healed with a hole, and then re-torn to close the hole.

"How old is Hekate?" Eirika asked Valter, while he stripped off his gloves.

"Likely older than I am. Wyverns live a long time, assuming no one cuts that admirable span short."

"You don't know her age?"

Valter tucked the gloves into his belt pouch and then settled next to Eirika. "Why should I? She's not one of your little pet bats, bred by humans for our use. She's a wild beast." His sly grin touched his lips again. "I'm the only man who's ridden her."

"You tamed a feral wyvern by yourself?"

He leaned in to her, brushing her long hair behind her shoulders, running his hand lightly over her cheek and neck. "I chased her down and she acquiesced to me," he said, a private murmur, an intimate rasp down her spine. "There’s pleasures to be found in a life in service, wouldn’t you say? A hand to eat out of, a body to fight for, no thoughts of your own." He twined Eirika's hair between his fingers, thoughtfully. "Tell me, what’s the life of a wyvern otherwise? Wandering alone until she hunts her own lands to starvation?"

"I've always fought against everyone else's ideas of me. To find my own purpose."

"Ah, Eirika…" Valter's breath prickled her skin, and she felt the same feral energy in him, a monster who chose to be at her beck and call, coiled to lunge if only she gave the word. "I don’t _have_ to find my own purpose when I have yours."

She felt that same prickling feeling deep in her, a formless desire to hold the beast by the jaws, let him press his fangs into her skin, while he moved in and nuzzled her, lips against her neck, moving down under the collar of her tunic. He inhaled, and then pulled back slightly, eye narrowed.

"Why do you smell like blood?"

Eirika's face flushed. "I'm menstruating."

A puzzlement furrowed his expression for a moment, and then he raised his eyebrows. "Ah, yes. The bloom of red flowers, they called it in court. A pretty name for blood, isn't it? Is it causing you pain?"

It was hard to imagine him in court, a nobleman idly listening to gossip. Easier to imagine him restless, bored, bound or pacing. "No. The flight's been a good distraction."

"Hm… but I could offer you another."

Desire, hot, rapacious, bloomed through Eirika so ferociously that she suddenly found it difficult to sit still and with her thighs together. "That's right—you _like_ the taste of blood, don't you?"

Her entire body felt shivery, greedy. She didn't wait for whatever his response would have been, but pushed him down instead, into the grass, savoring the needful noise he made, how his body so quickly oriented itself to her actions. She undid his belt and he pulled his tunic off, throwing both to the side. He was not nearly as gaunt as his hollowed face suggested; rather, well-muscled and lean, a narrow waist contrasted with his broad shoulders and defined hips which she could press her fingers into and feel him twitch, watch the blood rush back into his skin with the movements of her hand. He was scarred, especially on his arms, some the familiar marks of battle, others ragged and shallow, the scars of a wyvern handler.

With his back to the ground she straddled him, nipping his neck, his collar, his chest, digging her nails into his breast and marveling at how quickly she could feel him hiss and harden beneath her. He ran his own hands up her body, her back, then cupping her breasts to stroke them. She moved his hand to her own hips, lifted her chest to his face and he took her nipple in his mouth, first gently, then insistently, sucking and lapping against her sensitive skin in motions that sent that greedy heat to her hips, her core, until her mind was empty of everything except for how much she _wanted._ She fumbled to pull up her skirt, discarding her rag, and pulled Valter back down by his mane of seaweed hair.

“Mm, mine lady, to taste your petals—“

Eirika shoved his head down harder against the dirt savoring how he both strained and gave in to her. She slid her legs under his shoulders, straddling him so that his face was shoved against her cunt. 

“Less talk,” she said. As if he needed the encouragement; he was so taut and eager under her that she could feel every breath and ripple through his body. He braced his hands against her ass and buried his mouth into her, licking, sucking, feasting, the folds of her pussy slippery and engorged and so sensitive that the rocking and fucking tipped her over the edge immediately, and she gasped and clenched and dug her fingers like claws into his scalp.

Valter loosened his grip at the shudder that went through her.

“No.” Her voice came out harsh, a bark from her throat, more lust than words. “Keep going.” Eirika tipped herself forward, more weight on him, rough, and his calloused hands dug into her thighs. With one arm she steadied herself, and the other she ran under her tunic, brushing her own nipple. The pleasure was twicefold now, consuming her rather than building, electric through her body. His mouth and tongue were searching her, knowing her, ravenous, and she ground against him with her clit as well, wet mouth and wet flesh, almost—almost—insatiable—

The orgasm that took her was much less gentle this time, a gasping, rolling heat that filled her entirely. It took her several moments for the insistent pulsing in her to subside, and then for her to catch her breath. She rolled off of Valter, into the grass beside him.

He was slick with her blood from nose to chin, wearing it with the self-satisfaction of a wildcat. When she met his eyes, he licked his lips, idly flexing his undoubtedly stiff fingers over his bare chest. His gaze drifted to her thighs, just as bare and wet with smudged red. He was hard, his breeches tented by his erection, but even with her finished his attention was only for her; he made no move to touch his own sex. 

“...what does it taste like?” Eirika asked, despite herself.

“Iron. Salt. Meaty.” Valter sounded a bit distant, breathy. Preoccupied with thoughts Eirika suspected she would be happier not prying for. She scrunched up her nose in distaste. Well, she didn’t have to feel her own blood in her mouth, and she had certainly enjoyed her end of the experience. Instead of continuing the conversation, she turned over and nudged his erection with the toe of her boot, immediately and entirely shifting his focus.

“I think you deserve a boon for your service. What will you ask of me?”

"What will you give?" Even smeared with blood, the way his hair fanned out over his sharp face and under his back was undeniably attractive. Or maybe the blood, the patch covering his missing eye, added to the allure— _hers._

"Just ask me and find out."

He met her gaze, unblinking, his hands stilled. "I want to mark you."

"...Mark me?" The words stirred an odd feeling in her chest, a mix of revulsion and excitement that he even dared to ask.

"As you marked me." He spoke in a slow drawl, as pleased as he looked, fanned out over the grass.

"My eye?" She touched her face, imagining. No, the thought only made her wince. It was him she wanted to imagine strained against her sword.

He chuckled, a raspy noise. "Oh, no. I wouldn't dare mar your pretty face, even if an eyepatch, as you’ve said, has a certain charm. Besides, you don't have Hekate to serve as your eyes. No, I want something smaller. More private. A scar, hidden from sight to everyone but us. A reminder that I have fangs, hm?"

Ah. Yes. That roused the heat in her, warm, daring. A secret between them, a small mark from him, perhaps on her inner thigh… she realized she was running her hands over her nipples again.

"Fine." She sat up, finding his discarded shirt, and tossed it at him. "But clean yourself up first."

Valter bundled his tunic and took it to the creek, where he washed his face thoroughly even while Hekate bumped her head with curiosity against him regardless of how he tried to shove the huge wyvern away. Once clean, he returned with the linen damp. 

"Sit back." Eirika did so, legs spread, skirts pulled up around her waist, and he knelt in front of her and sponged the drying mess off her thighs and groin, gentle and cool caresses over her still-tender flesh. Satisfied, he tossed the dirtied cloth into the field and pressed his thumb into the mound of her inner thigh, just below where it curved in to meet her mons pubis. "Here. A little lower, so as not to nick the vein. That's sufficient, don't you think?"

Eirika's breath caught in her throat—not fear, but anticipation. She brushed dangling hair out of Valter's face as he leaned in, the feel of his breath sending a pleasant shiver over her damp, pale skin. He kissed her, fully, lips and mouth against the curve of her thigh. With one hand he held her hips in place, while with his other he undid the fasten of his breeches. Eirika tangled her own hand in his hair, her knuckles against his creek-cooled cheekbone, enjoying the feeling of him, the sight of how his shoulders and back moved, the taut knowledge that at any moment this shivering warmth might prick into pain. Still working over her thigh, her hips, the fragile joint between them, as if waiting to be severed, Valter took himself in his hand. 

Watching him touch himself, how hard he was, Eirika found herself running her fingers over her chest, tweaking her nipples… pleasurable, yes, but not enough. Her fingers wandered lower, and she hooked her other leg around Valter’s shoulder, bringing him yet closer to her with a grunt.

Feeling his breath shorten, him tense against her again, her own breath and heart rate quickening—as if just the presence, the sight, the touch of this man, more feral beast than soldier, brought out her own fanged depths. She arched back, her thoughts drifting into pleasure, her fingers busy, and he bit her.

It was sudden, a pinch and then a blossoming of wet and the snap of real pain—more than she’d expected. She gasped and twitched, her legs bucking. Valter tightened his grip, sinking his teeth deeper into her. Eirika closed her eyes, willing herself to breath, to relax, to dissipate the pain through her body as though it were a tumble or blow in battle, and quickly enough the startling pain unwound into an ache that wasn’t entirely unpleasant in its own right; and when she touched her clit again, the flood of pleasure was even sweeter, sharpened by adrenaline. 

His teeth were still in her, his tongue probing the raw wound—she wondered if he would bite hard enough to tear flesh away, leave a hole, swallow part of her as she had him. And he was still crouched, bowed before her on his knees, twitching, not unlike how he had been when he knelt before her and cleaning her—or on the tip of her sword, grinding himself against her boot, ravenous, needing— the pain and pleasure both unfurled together and she let her grip go limp just as he shuddered and spilled his own seed over the fertile ground.

Carefully, he pulled away, appraising his work; a neat bite-mark, two semi-circles now welling with fresh blood, bright and new. He licked the wound clean, then stretched out, laying his head on her unmarked thigh to gaze up at her with an odd contentment in his face and form. Eirika pressed her palm against the wound to staunch the bleeding. It wasn’t deep—human teeth could only dig so far—but best to keep it closed and clean.

It was strange, wasn’t it? That she felt the same contentment her beast so clearly displayed? She began to ask him a question, but was interrupted by the sound of a scuffle—a guttural hack—and Eirika looked up just in time to see Hekate tip her head back and swallow the last shredded traces of Valter’s bloody shirt.

Valter bolted upright, but only to double over in a raspy wheezing laugh she might have mistaken, in other circumstances, for a death rattle. He wiped his mouth, fighting for breath as Hekate settled back onto her haunches, closer to them, a scrap of bloody linen stuck to her beak. Mortification shoved all other thoughts aside. Eirika covered her face with her hands, torn between laughing herself and shouting at the stupid wyvern.

Valter waved his hand, finally managing words. “She tastes good, doesn't she?” he called over to Hekate. "I would say the most beautiful flowers are flavored with blood!"

Yes, that definitely sounded like something he would say. Her embarrassment deepened to ice even while her face flushed. "If your tongue wasn't so useful, I'd have it removed," she muttered, pushing her knee meaningfully into Valter's hip, a gesture that seemed only to increase his amusement.

"Ah, but you admit my use is greater to you than the inconvenience. The pity is that I don't have a replacement to wear back."

"You were intending to put it back on?!" Eirika's mortification was overtaken by an intense sense of gratefulness to the nosy wyvern.

"You prefer me bare-chested? Very well." The way he turned to address her was deliberate, arching. Truly this man aspired to be as troublesome as possible. Eirika could feel her blush creeping down her neck. 

"No! We'll find a spare that fits you back at camp." Had he just been wearing the same clothes since he'd been captured? She sure hoped not, but couldn't conjure up any memories that suggested otherwise. At least he seemed to have washed them.

Eirika willed the flush in her cheeks to subside, ducking her head to busy herself with tending to the bite on her leg. She ripped out a piece of her petticoat to bind it with and tied it tight, but not so tight the fabric would cut off circulation. The action, battlefield, businesslike, cleared her head. She looked back up at Valter, lazily tasting the last of her blood on his fingertips.

"When I asked you what you wanted," she began, and he tilted his head attentively. "I expected you to want intercourse."

"Is that so?" He didn't seem any more interested in this subject than any other.

"...Do you?" Wasn't that how it was supposed to be? The most intimate act, the last request, was for her to be a hole waiting to be filled? Not that she'd never enjoyed the act, but… being thought of as a hole rather than a creature of bone and muscle, a beast, perhaps… It was tiresome, wasn't it?

Valter shrugged, an easy motion unthinking in its confidence, his gaze unyielding. "I have no care for what people think ought to be done. I am your lance. Wield me as you please."

Eirika let her hand rest on the knot of her makeshift bandage, already spotted with crimson. Her own gaze lingered on his dark eyepatch, the flesh he'd yielded to her, the mark he bore so proudly and publicly, knowing when all saw him that they saw the act by which she had claimed him. And now she bore her own mark, secret, private, a small scar she would carry with her and the memory with him. A private admission of the desire of a beast.

Even with her hand resting on his, her own bright eyes meeting his steel-blade eye, that heat in her belly rose again, a feral desire, a wildness; to spur him on to fight for her, to battle for him in turn, alongside him, to ride him, to be ridden, two hunting beasts with fangs bared, destinies intertwined, wild and alive and fearless.


End file.
